This wasn't a Video Game
by Mike Teavee Obsessive
Summary: Mike is a pilot in a war aircraft. In a split second he has to make a decision that could make or break the futures of hundreds. Little does he know what a huge effect it will have on himself. [2005movie]
1. This wasn't a video game

**Disclaimer: **Don't own any part of it. Unfortunately. #Sigh#.  
**Author's note: **Random ficlet that appeared in my brain after watching a WW1 documentary. Hopefully a bit more entertaining than a WW1 documentary…  
Do tell me what you think. Please?  
Oh, and the 'blisteringly hot' line has a kinda double meaning. You'll know when you get there (all Mike fans have probably got it already, heh).

**This wasn't a Video Game**

Mike carefully dodged the two enemy fighter planes careening straight towards him. He checked his scanners, but saw no other aircraft in front of him, so he made a hard right. Leaning desperately into his joystick, he turned his own plane, frantically shouting orders down to the bombardier.  
"Get ready to fire!"  
He prayed his calculations were right. If they were, they had good time to turn and prepare a good firing aim; if they weren't, he was giving the enemy an open opportunity to shoot his plane down. Mike Teavee had never been wrong about anything ever. Apart from one time. That one mistake had never left his memory. It had always lingered over him whenever he had had to make a vital decision. And there seemed to have been a lot of them upon leaving the chocolate factory. His first day back at school, he could have either let the situation overwhelm him, or he could have got on with his life. His first professional basketball match, he could have used the remaining three seconds to shoot the winning basket from halfway across the court, or given up the game completely. His first time in an air battle, he could have deserted the chase of an enemy heading for a civilian city, or risked his last drop of fuel to shoot it down before it did any damage. Decisions peppered his life now that he had a proper one.  
"Ready?" he yelled down his radio.  
"Ready, sir!" the reply came.  
Mike lowered his eye to the gun sight and focused on the little white cross in the centre. He checked the scanner again. He checked the wind speed again. He checked the fuel levels again. He checked and re-checked everything he'd been trained to check then lowered his eye back down to the gun sight. He swallowed and waited. No matter how many missions he went on, Mike couldn't get used to the tension. It was the hardest part of his job. The rest was relatively easy: He'd acquired his geographical knowledge from his father, and his steering and aiming skills from video games. But this wasn't a video game. No video game allows the enemy to shoot back. No video game has explosions that deafeningly loud. No video game makes the player risk their life to save thousands.  
A single bead of sweat dripped off the end of Mike's nose and it was only then he realised how blisteringly hot he was. His concentration lapsed for just a fraction of a second, but regained it just in time to see the enemy aircraft approaching…at a completely different altitude!

"Oh my God…" Mike whispered to himself.  
"What is it, sir?" the captain from the gunning station said over the radio. Mike barely registered it.  
"Holy shit."  
"Sir?"  
Mike thought fast; for some reason whenever he was faced with a situation like this, he would ask himself: "What would Wonka do?"  
He could never admit it to anyone, but Mike had actually had a deep respect for Wonka, living for so long as a recluse and yet still being a success. Mike had spent the first sixteen and a half years of his life as a recluse, but he hadn't really achieved anything, and he had still relied heavily on his parents and others around him. It was almost illogical – and hideously ironic – that people now depended on _him_.  
"Prepare to climb!" he barked down the radio. There was a flustered reply, but Mike paid it no heed. He grabbed the joystick and sharply pulled it towards himself. He climbed for a good hundred feet before he eased the plane back into a horizontal position. He panicked slightly; now all his calculations were completely thrown. He was too muddled to write down the new ones, but his head refused to remember them by itself. He blindly pushed buttons and pulled levers at his brain's command. He glanced at the scanner, away, and quickly back again. To his horror, the enemy aircraft was climbing.  
"Uh, sir?" the captain's voice came over the radio again, "The enemy plane is climbing."  
A small part of Mike's old, sarcastic self rose up inside him, but died away again, too overcome by fear to make an appearance.  
"It'll be alright," he said firmly, still preparing his own plane to fire.  
The enemy plane was getting scarily close, scarily fast. What was scarier was that it wasn't even firing at them. From what Mike could see of the model, it appeared they had every capability of doing so.  
"Sir?" the captain's voice came yet again – Mike was starting to get sick of that voice, "There aren't any…kamikaze aircraft out today, are there?"  
Mike gulped; frankly, it was a possibility, "No way. The Colonel said there weren't."  
He took a shaky breath and looked in the gun sight again. He shook his head slowly. There was no way out of this. No time to turn, no room to fire, nowhere to go. The captain seemed to realise this.  
"Goodbye, Mike," he said simply down the radio.  
Mike didn't even blink, "Goodbye."  
At least he'd done his job. They'd destroyed the rest of the enemy craft, and this last one was about to get destroyed by itself. The small, Spanish village was safe.

Most members of that small Spanish village looked up at the huge, yellow explosion that erupted right over their houses. There was a solemn silence as pieces of charred metal splashed into the ocean and sank to the bottom, out of sight.

**A/n: **I've got to say, I had absolutely no idea which direction this fic was going in until I just wrote it…but I certainly didn't think it would make me cry. Doesn't help that I've got sad music on.


	2. Mr & Mrs Teavee

**Disclaimer: **Much as I'd like to, I do not own CATCF or anything related to it (unless you count the DVD, the soundtrack, the 2006 calendar and several million pictures of Mike).

**Author's note: **So, we've had the event, here come the consequences. The thoughts and feelings of people very close to Mike – some of these are OCs, just to give you a heads up – and the rest of the cast of CATCF. Please R&R.

It was Mr Teavee who received the phone call. He sat in a sort of shallow shock until his wife came home with the groceries.  
"I thought I'd make a lasagne tonight, honey, is that OK?"  
Mr Teavee grunted in reply. Mrs Teavee dumped the bags in the kitchen and sat next to him on the couch, a curious expression on her face.  
"What is it?" she asked, gently putting a hand over her husband's.  
"M-Mike," he managed to choke out.  
"What about him?" Mrs Teavee's voice was now laced with concern.  
"He…he died in a mission yesterday."  
Saying the words out loud caused his defence barriers to break down and he starting sobbing into his palms. Mrs Teavee just stared.  
"Died?" she whispered, "But…oh God."  
A wave of emotion passed over her, but she didn't cry; somehow crying was an insult to Mike's memory, as it was something he'd always rather disapproved of. Mr Teavee continued to weep uncontrollably, however. He took off his glasses and ran a hand carelessly over his eyes to clear some of the tears. He saw clearly for about two seconds before his eyes welled up again.  
Mrs Teavee scooped her husband – who was now shaking quite violently – into her arms and kissed his ever-balding head lightly, softly speaking words of comfort. She felt his tears soak into her shoulder and the heat of his hands in hers. All her physical feelings had become weirdly over-sensitized, but her emotional feelings remained fairly dead. It frightened her how little she was caring about her son's death.  
"I'm gonna start on dinner," she said monotonously, releasing her husband who just fell the other way onto the couch and curled up into the foetal position, his cheeks glistening with tears.

Mr Teavee could barely think through his sobs. He was so out of it, he could barely even register any sad feelings. But they were obviously there somewhere, because he was crying so hard he felt his lungs were about to burst. His head ached terribly, and his chest was burning. His eyes were stinging, his body was screaming for rest, his throat was dry and scratchy. He'd never felt physical pain like it. And the emotional pain was about twenty times worse than that. He figured – and always had figured – that he was the closest to Mike. Not that many people had ever been that close to him; he had always liked to keep himself to himself. Mr Teavee took consolidation in the fact that now no one would ever bother his son again. Though he couldn't help but wish he could make just one more interrupting phone call to him…  
Mrs Teavee felt angry at herself: her son had just _died_! She could at least be upset! Why wasn't she? She chopped meat in a daze. She admitted that she hadn't been exceptionally close to her son. He'd done everything in his power to try to block her out. His father was the only one who ever seemed to get anywhere, and she had known, even when Mike was very young, that he was the only one who was _ever_ going to get anywhere. Still, that wasn't to say there hadn't been hurtful moments. When Mike had taken part in the spelling bee at age seven, he had begged her not to go to support him, claiming that she "cramped his style". He'd used that excuse on fourteen separate occasions. Then when he hit eleven, his excuse changed to "you're just not with it". She'd even been a little upset – though not surprised – when Mike chose Mr Teavee to go to the chocolate factory with him instead of her. But probably the most hurtful accusation that had ever come from Mike was him saying that she should have been there when he had gone through the pain of being shrunk and then being stretched. She tried to explain that she couldn't have been there because of the one-parent limitation, but he didn't hear a word of it. It had been a bit of a blur, but she was fairly certain that the words "bad mother" and "never there for me" were thrown into it somewhere. Out of her good nature she had tried her best to make it up to him as he lived his last few years under her roof. When he left, he was a much more amiable person, but he still expressed his disappointment that she hadn't been there for him when he really needed her. And now she'd failed again. Her son's second big moment and she'd fucked it up again. And this time it didn't matter how much she apologised or made excuses, because he was gone. Forever.  
A part of her couldn't help but feel relieved when her eyes welled and she sobbed gently. She wasn't a bad mother after all. It had just taken Mike's death to prove that. She cried harder, letting the tears fall into the unprepared meat in front of her.

Mrs Teavee stayed in the kitchen whilst Mr Teavee eased himself into a sitting position. They remained that way for almost an hour until a knock came at the door. Mr Teavee went to answer it.  
"Jackie," he greeted her. Jackie bustled with a pram and several large bags.  
"Hey, Dad," she replied, then called, "Hi Mom!"  
Mr Teavee automatically relieved her of some of her bags when she struggled to get through the door.  
"Thanks," she said brightly, flopping down onto the couch. Mr Teavee gradually moved round to sit with her as she talked, "Well, bus journey here was awful. Their service is really slipping, have you noticed? Well, I guess you wouldn't seeing as you've got a car. You lucky dogs. To bad I didn't pester Mike into getting one before he left. Oh, speaking of which, have you got any news for me? Sarah and I haven't heard from him in like a week."  
She picked the baby out of the pram she had brought in and jogged her on her knee, "And Sarah misses her daddy, don't you, sweetie?"  
Mr Teavee smiled weakly, "We got some news just a few hours ago, actually."  
"Oh, great, how's he doing?"  
The hope looked so fresh and alive in Jackie's eyes that it broke Mr Teavee's heart all the more to have to be the one to tell her.  
"I…I'm really sorry, but…I'm afraid…" he choked a little.  
"Dad, what is it?" Jackie's voice had lost its enthusiasm and now sounded worried.  
"His plane was involved in an accident," he said, quickly enough so he didn't have a chance to stop halfway through, but slowly enough so she would understand. Jackie froze.  
"What?" she breathed. Sarah looked confused from her mother's lack of motion. The continued lack of motion made her start to cry.  
Jackie bowed her head for a moment, then got up and silently started to move her things into the bedroom.  
"Jackie? Are you OK?"  
She still didn't say anything; she just shushed her wailing daughter until she settled down. Then she slammed the door shut and collapsed onto the bed.

**A/n:** Oh yeah, the people in each chapter are gonna be linked somehow to the person in the next chapter…if you know what I mean…


End file.
